"Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete."<p>Just NO NO AND NO, I can't be the only one who hates the new Windows interface, I want to be able to place my windows where I want them not be forced to use full screen for everything, or rely on some automated way to place them, I know better than the OS how and where I want my windows.<p>Sorry but I had to get that out of my chest, I can't deal with the new Windows interface, it annoys me.<p>Microsoft please stop trying to force a tablet/touch interface into a desktop computer it just doesn't make any sense.
"Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps."<p>Wrong. Manual windows management is just what a professional needs. The window manager will never know what is the best position and size for your programming editor/environment. It will never know where is the best position and size for your preferred debug window. And how to place and size your browser windows for API documentation.<p>Sure, a typical computer user needs only a full-screen browser window. But when you're really trying to get work done, Microsoft's "new" concepts are just wrong.
Am i the only one who does not like "touch" on a desktop/laptop.
It is not the revolutionary input method that makes everything magical.
I want to think in boxes (desktops) not a fluid streams of desktop space.<p>We need something else for the desktop.
Am I right in thinking with this design you can only have one app as a point of focus at a time? So assuming I'm doing development, I can't be in my IDE, with a browser open on a particular stack overflow question, while having the app I'm debugging open in front of it all and some other app also in view showing diagnostics?<p>Instead, I'd have to flick back and forth between the apps like a headless chicken?<p>[Edit] Actually, take his example apps as a suggestion. He's running VLC to watch star trek, but can't watch it at the same time as say using the browser. In a traditional window set-up, you can just set VLC to stay on top and overlay a portion of the screen while you can continue doing something else (like using the browser).<p>Although the concept looks pretty, it almost seems to be a step backwards in available functionality.
<i>Manual window management is awful. Windows 8 ditched windows in favor of fullscreen apps. Traditional desktop window paradigms are powerful but obsolete.</i><p>In any multi-monitor situation living without manual window management is awful. What they need to do is to offer a choice instead of forcing users down a specific path.
Manual window management isn't the perfect UI paradigm for anyone, regardless of input method. Being able to overlap by a few pixels isn't necessary for me.<p>A simple way to see where window management <i>should</i> have gone is to look how it has changed within applications, where the resistance to change is lower. 15 years ago it was all MDI applications, where the idea that a doc has a window . Soon people realized that noone really needs to overlap their word documents windows, or move their photoshop tool dialog by 3 pixels, so more modern applications used docking managers to snap and tile their workspace together to use as much of the available area as possible.<p>As usual in the demos and mockups of both Win8 and this concept, the applications demonstrated happen to be simple communication apps, media players and so on. I'd like to see Photoshop, Visual Studio, AutoCad etc. that actually have a large workspace with several confgurable areas. I don't think it would be horrible to lose the movable windows, but I'd want something as powerful in return: Windows should manage the desktop the way a good desktop application manages its different areas.
Although this is a much better looking concept than what is currently available in Windows 8 I still do not understand how it solves anything for people who actually need to do development on these machines. I would hate to have to do development in an IDE such as Visual Studio or Eclipse while being restricted to this sort of interface.<p>Trying to force a tablet interface on a desktop machine is simply not acceptable. It makes matters even worse when you look at a server operating system such as Windows Server 2012. That is simply the biggest FAIL for an interface on a server OS I have ever seen.
I like it. I think the 2+ decades old idea of resizable and draggable windows is becoming a nuisance. With 5+ windows overlaying each others, the desktop becomes a chaotic mess.<p>People who say they need to be able to have multiple windows on screen should really be having multiple monitors if they don't already. Because even with high-res monitors, most productivity applications (IDEs,Excel,etc) are unusable anyway when not in full screen.<p>The drag&drop can be easily solved by dragging content from one app to another by dropping on their desired app icon on the taskbar. Or have dedicated share button to other apps like how Android does it.
It looks fancy and pretty and all that, but I would probably hate using it for the same reason I hate using Windows 8 right now.<p>Yes. Manual window-management is tedious and in an ideal world <i>should</i> be obsolete, but I don't think this is the solution either.<p>Basically, I hate this automatic window-management more than I hate manual window-management and then we've not really gone anywhere useful.<p>For reference, I use tiling WMs in Linux and I'm happy with that, but I can see how that's <i>not</i> a solution for most people. We need to reach a middle-ground somehow.
Not too surprising to see lots of people here who would prefer a gradual evolution of Windows toward a touch interface. Bouncing back and forth between legacy Windows and "Modern" UI is obviously unsatisfactory. But, remember that Microsoft tried a gradual, familiar evolutionary approach three times previously and failed. Where were you then?<p>Now Microsoft has a new kind of failure. Is evolving it in this proposed direction or any other going to succeed? I think this proposal is good. It helps the "bouncing back and forth" problem. One problem is that Microsoft has different security models for "Modern" and legacy apps. (Never mind what kind of sense it makes to have a stronger and weaker app security model in the same OS.)<p>Here is a potential irony: Ubuntu Touch is an evolutionary approach to bringing a conventional implementation of the desktop metaphor to touch. I could see using an Ubuntu tablet. It probably won't be widely popular since it will have some touch-unfriendly legacy in it. But it might end up being a better evolutionary path than what Microsoft chose. But I'd know what I'm getting and probably be comfortable with it.
I did my own design idea on the next version of windows, but didn't go so far as calling it "Windows 9"
<a href="http://pedalpete.github.io/windows_idea/" rel="nofollow">http://pedalpete.github.io/windows_idea/</a><p>This design is much 'nicer' than mine, and probably more progressive. I would have liked to have seen what was returned in the search, and the layout of a search.
As far as touchscreen-compatible window management goes, I'm not sure it gets better than ChromeOS.<p>For example, the keyboard shortcuts for snapping a window left or right let you customize how wide the window is after the snap. So for example, alt + ] snaps the window to the right half of the screen. The same shortcut again grows the window to 90% wide, then 80%, then 60%, and finally back to 50%. So if I want whatever I'm reading to be decently wide at the cost of letting my SSH window take up slightly less than half the screen, I can make that happen without a mouse. Or for a good responsive site, 20% or 30% of my screen is all the site needs.<p>In addition, when I have two windows each taking up 50%, hovering on the window edges they share them brings up an additional handle that lets me adjust the width of both windows simultaneously (if I want). Why can't Windows do that?<p>Finally, there's a keyboard shortcut for centering a window on the screen, which I am a total sucker for.
I don't agree with Microsoft.. but i also don't agree with statements like "Just NO NO AND NO...I want to be able to place my windows where I want...I know better than the OS how and where I want my windows" and "Wrong. Manual windows management is just what a professional needs."
At least, it is not true for me. Manually placing and resizing windows, lowering and raising them, that is sooo much mouse work which reduces my productivity, i'm happy that in 99% of my workflow i do not need to do that kind of stuff anymore, but when i want the freedom i can just fall back to that ..<p>I think Microsoft got the point with their tablet-orientation fullscreen-only-apps, driven by touchscreen interfaces, but agreed, forcing everyone into that (currently coupled with the dual-old-desktop-mess) is ridiculous, user-hostile and typically Microsoft. This inofficial Windows 9 concept does not really help either.. IMHO they are looking for what tiling window managers (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager</a>) have implemented since a long time (without being driven by the touchy-concepts), without taking away any freedom like Microsoft always does it, because MS thinks they know what's best for their users? :<p>• Provide automatic placement for windows, fullscreen, halfscreen, spiraled, any layout which makes sense for you.
• Have the nice side-effect that they are much more controllable by keyboard only, increasing productivity even more (at least for developer's kind of work)
• Provide the freedom, that if you want to, you can just take windows and resize them freely like default window managers<p>Introducing and playing with new concepts still is the right, however i think MS should stop forcing users into every new concept, but leave the freedom for the advanced user to customize to their style... if i have ever to go back to windows i hope there is a tiling window manager with the features i am accustomed to ;)
My one complaint about Windows 8 is that I can't use Win+# to switch to the fullscreen apps. I wouldn't even mind the fact that they took up the entire screen if I was able to navigate to and from them with ease. The way to navigate between the full screen apps is with Win+tab which forces me to use two paradigms for task switching. I'm sure this irks alt-tabbers as well.
I was wondering what the difference is between the hatred for the win 8 change compared to the change from win 3.x to 95 (nt 4)?<p>Was it just because not so many people used win 3.x and so ms could change it without so much moaning?<p>If metro was developed instead of the windows 95 start menu, would it have been hated as much??
Windows had to give us choice to use old windows 7 style, or windows 8 style for touch. Right now for enterprise I see, that for companies it is no difference to teach how to use Ubuntu or new windows 8. Windows 8 put OS from leader position on PC to mobile OS for touch devices.
Here is what I want from an OS UI:<p><a href="http://williamtpayne.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/gui-ng-desiderata.html" rel="nofollow">http://williamtpayne.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/gui-ng-desiderat...</a><p>Perhaps not to everyone's taste, but hey-ho.
<useless><p>"Personalization<p>Users are given control over the desktop background that gives personality to the user experience."<p>--<p>What the fuck???!<p>If they advertise like that then why don't they just sell Windows 95 again?<p></useless>
This is almost done with Rainmeter and <a href="http://omnimo.info/" rel="nofollow">http://omnimo.info/</a>. Pretty useful on my B121 tablet.
Not a fan of this design. Its hard to distinguish what UIs go with what and everything generally seems all thrown together in one UI with no demarcation.